Now I noticed quite a common trait amongst with young children - they are quite keen to impress adults so they tend to spout information that they have gleamed (from school, from a book they read, from their friends, from the internet etc). What they do not realize is that their efforts to impress the other party rarely ever succeed, especially with us adults. A far more effective way to try to establish rapport with the other party is simply to ask them questions: be it about themselves or simply seek their opinion about an issue. So if you find out that this lady you've just met is a teacher, you could ask her what she enjoys about her job - or you could also ask her about what she thinks about the education system. You recognize the fact that you're never going to know more about the teaching professional than a teacher, there is so much that she can teach you about her profession, so you engage her in a conversation whereby she gets to do the talking and you do the listening. Seems obvious? Not to children.

Let me give you an example of what I had witnessed recently.

Lady: I am a teacher.

Child (about 9 or 10 years old): My auntie Sarah is a teacher too!

Lady: Right. (does not quite know what to say) Well, I am a Chemistry teacher.

Child: My auntie Sarah teaches Maths!

Lady: (Senses that the conversation is pointless) Okay. Excuse me. (Reaches for her phone and pretends to be busy doing something on her phone to end the conversation.)

Oh this is something that astonished me with my own nephew. You see, I have a table tennis table and we played a lot of table tennis whilst my family visited. And okay, he is a child playing many a total of six adults, clearly he is at a disadvantage. Yet he refused to accept that by virtue of his age, he was going to struggle to win against any of the adults and he often threw a strop when he loss. In fact he wasn't that bad at table tennis - just not as good as the adults. It led to his his father (who was a brilliant table tennis player) deliberately losing to him just to make him feel better but I wasn't prepared to do that - so I would thrash him but I would still lose to my brother in law. My nephew then just couldn't figure out why he would be able to beat his father but still get thrashed by me when his father would often beat me. I rolled my eyes in disbelief and didn't say anything - like is he that much in denial about how much his kind father is deliberately letting him win? Really? I resisted the urge to say anything, I didn't want to speak out of turn.

Oh we have all heard children scream "it's not fair!" over so many things. Because we are just two weeks before Christmas, I was in a shop recently and this kid was throwing a massive tantrum over this snowman toy. He was screaming, "but Max has one, so I want one too! Why can Max have one but not me? It is not fair!" The poor mother was probably thinking, it is a Christmas toy - you're just going to play with it for a two or three weeks then just forget all about it by the time January comes around so she refused to get him one. She pointed out to him that he has plenty of toys at home which he barely plays with and he should play with those rather than get a new one just because his friend has one of those snowmen toys. But oh no, the kid wasn't going to just walk away without any protest - he screamed, he cried and he did everything he could to make sure his mother got the message that he wasn't happy.

You may respond to this list and say, oh every child is different, you can't expect a child to develop a perfect set of social skills - nobody is going to be perfect. However, I do remember this guy in my school, let's call him Chen. Well, it suffices to say that Chen's social skills were very poorly developed and he really had no friends in school. Even during break time, he would sit on his own and read a book instead of talking to friends (because he had no friends). I have no idea what Chen is doing today, but I can imagine that he would simply take out his phone and stare down at his phone during his breaks at work and still have no friends. Modern technology has plenty today to keep people like Chen amused (computer games anyone?) so Chen could quite easily get through an entire day without having to speak to anyone yet I can't help but think that he can't be that oblivious to his loneliness. Was Chen a loner by choice or did he secretly yearn to have friends? Is his loneliness actually making him feel utterly miserable? Or is he used to it by now? If you don't want your child to end up like Chen, then it is not so much a question of trying to teach your child the right social skills but being prepared to do something about the situation when it is clear that things are going wrong. Not doing anything about the child's poor behaviour would actually do the child far more harm in the long run.

So my friends, what do you think? Can parents actually nurture their children into sociable adults with the right kinds of soft skills to get along with others in society? Or is this something that children have to learn for themselves, often the hard way? Are some people just loners who have no interest in making friends? How can parents make sure their children don't end up like Chen? Many thanks for reading.

This post was first published over at the blog of Limpeh Is Foreign Talent on 14 December 2016. It is reproduced with permission.